A mugshot of Lucy Letby. Reuters File Photo
Former British nurse and convicted child serial killer Lucy Letby on Thursday sought permission from a London court to appeal against her conviction for attempting to murder a newborn baby, amidst concerns over the fairness of her trials. Letby, 34, was found guilty of murdering seven children and attempting to murder seven more between June 2015 and June 2016 while working in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, northern England, making her Britain's most notorious serial child killer in modern times. She was convicted of an eighth count of attempted murder in a retrial earlier this year, after the original jury failed to reach a verdict on that charge.
Letby's lawyer, Benjamin Myers, informed London's Court of Appeal that Letby "maintains and has always maintained her innocence of the offences". Myers argued that the retrial was an abuse of process, as Letby could not receive a fair trial due to extensive media coverage of her convictions, which included intense public hostility towards her. "There was no way the jury in the second trial could have been unaffected by the publicity, commentary, and hostility," Myers stated. Letby's attempt to overturn her convictions from the first trial was denied in May. She can now only challenge those convictions if the Criminal Cases Review Commission refers the cases back to the Court of Appeal.
Since her trials, Letby's conviction has increasingly been scrutinized, following criticism from some experts regarding the medical and statistical evidence presented by the prosecution. Some media outlets in Britain and abroad have raised questions about whether she might be a victim of a miscarriage of justice, while a public inquiry into her crimes is ongoing.
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